Weekend away

Enjoyed a great weekend away in Las Vegas/Boulder City, NV with our friends.

Here's what I did, exercise-wise:

Friday - not-so-easy 2 laps of SugarHouse Park, plus an extra 0.5 miles. Total: 5.6 miles in 58:03.
Saturday - very hilly route in Boulder City, NV, with great views of some ritzy neighborhoods and Lake Mead. Total about 5.3 miles in 59:39; 11:12 per mile but I was working pretty hard. It was very hilly! Mostly down on the way out and up on the way back. Some hills were so steep they were hard to racewalk legally, though I was able to do it.

From Las_Vegas

From Las_Vegas

Sunday - a slightly hilly route in Boulder City, NV. Some nice views of the desert landscape; walked past a horse ranch :) (I love horses, though I never did learn to ride very well - would still love to learn someday). 5.2 miles in 56:12 for 10:48 per mile. Was working pretty hard, too, but the whole route was a slight hill with larger ups & downs.

And food-wise, it was a great weekend. Not only did we hit some amazing restaurants, but I planned well and did not overeat, though I totally enjoyed myself. It was awesome!

Friday night we ate at The Bootlegger, a Las Vegas establishment that has been around for 30 years or so. Believe it or not, it was Italian food (yes, with a name like that, it really was Italian!), and it was amazing. The marinara dipping sauce with the little toasted garlicky bread pieces was divine (but I limited myself to two small pieces, about 1x1 inch), followed by a house salad with cucumbers, tomatoes & a little bleu cheese (yum!); I ordered a vinaigrette on the side (I use the smallest amount of dressing possible). Then I ordered pollo angelo, which is chicken with artichokes & mushrooms in a wine sauce, with linguine and sauteed zucchini & banana squash on the side. It was all delicious, and I had a dish of the best chocolate gelato I've ever had for dessert. It was amazingly rich and creamy. It was also a very large dish, but Loren helped me out and ate at least half of it for me :).

Saturday afternoon we lunched at the Boulder Dam Brewing Company, which was OK, but nothing too special. Loren said the beer was very good, but I could care less about beer, so it was wasted on me. There weren't a lot of good food choices there, but I settled on a grilled chicken salad with apple slices, walnuts (just a few) and a bit of bleu cheese, with honey mustard dressing on the side. I ate just a teeny bit of the dressing (1.5t or so?) and the greens were very good, but the chicken was not really flavorful at all, and there were hardly any apple slices :(. Still, I was very proud of myself for not indulging in ANY of the fried zucchini or beer battered french fries that my friends ordered. And I didn't feel deprived - I was just happy that I had made great choices. Yay!

After lunch we took a visit to Hoover Dam, which is totally amazing. I had been there about 10 years ago, before we moved to Utah, and we had taken a tour. We took a tour of the power plant with our friends Laurie & Mike, and it was fascinating. If you ever get a chance to visit, you will not be disappointed. The engineering behind this dam is amazing, and the amount of concrete used to build it is incredible. The sheer number of things that had to be invented/figured out even to get started on the project was incredible. For starters, they had to divert the whole Colorado River. It took them something like 19 months to blast four 56-foot wide tunnels that were 4000 feet long through the rock, and then they lined them with 3 feet of concrete. Those 4 tunnels carried all the river water around the dam construction site. Wow. Really, you need to visit sometime.

From Las_Vegas

For dinner the 6 of us (Mike & Laurie, Dean & Debbie, and Loren & me) went to The Bistro Cafe, an Italian cafe in Boulder City. It was very small, but despite being in a strip mall, it actually had a nice atmosphere (cozy) and the food was wonderful; very comparable to the higher priced Bootlegger in Vegas. I indulged in a little of the warm fresh bread with some amazing cheese/garlic blend, and a house salad with a scrumptious olive tapenade. For my entree, I chose almond crusted salmon with a dill sauce, which was quite delicious (I shared about 1/3 of it with others!). Loren had a filet with an incredible mushroom sauce, and I also got to try a bite of Debbie's wonderful chicken marsala. My entree came with some steamed veggies which were great - no butter! yay! but they had a terrific flavor, and some tasty wild rice, which was also very non-greasy, much to my surprise and delight. I had enough points for half a slice of the dutch chocolate cheesecake we ordered, along with my nice rich black coffee. Ahhh. A great meal, and I left feeling awesome about how I had planned my food that day to be able to indulge and not go over the top. After the weekend, I still have 23 of my points allowance for the week left to spend on Thanksgiving, if I need it (though since I am cooking, I may not need to use all of it).

Wow, this post makes it sound like all we did all weekend was eat, and I guess that was true to an extent. Friday night we also did some shopping at the outlet mall w/Laurie & Mike, and I didn't buy anything but had fun looking. Laurie did enjoy her shopping, though, and got some great deals. Saturday we took a drive around Boulder City and also visited a cute antique shop/country store type of place called Goatfeathers. I mostly looked and didn't spend too much (had to save the $ for the food! :)!). Sunday morning we enjoyed visiting Dean & Debbie's church and seeing the new building they added last year, and took Dean out to Applebee's for lunch. Applebee's was a safe and welcoming choice with their Weight Watchers menu. The food is just OK but I love knowing how to count the points for it and not having to guess at everything. Whew.

Of course there was a lot of driving, too - we drove TO Vegas on Friday, and drove BACK to SLC on Sunday, and it's a 6 hr drive each way. But we really enjoyed having so much time to chat w/o the kids around, and so even the driving was great. The kids were thrilled to see us when we picked them up at our friends' house in Provo, and we're happy to be home now - I have to say that I slept like a rock last night :) except for Michelle's midnight missing binky episode. I feel pretty good today, considering!

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